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My kids are well beyond the baby phase (3, 6, and 8) and I know very solidly that we will not be having anymore babies. It is a good place to be in my life right now. BUT, that doesn’t stop me from loving pregnant mamas and babes to be. And one way I can do that is by sewing baby quilts.

One of my friends from high school moved just minutes from me in the last year (from California where we grew up to Washington) and was expecting a baby. Before he was born, I created a quilt design (the b is for his name) and sewed it up and delivered it to her. Now that the baby is born, I need to get in gear and deliver a dinner (if you have a favorite post-baby dinner to give, please share!).

I started with this design (this is done in Inkscape. I recently upgraded computers and am trying some new programs out before I purchase Adobe Illustrator).

It ended up a bit differently once made up in soft Kona cottons, but I love it. I finished the back with mens cotton shirting fabric. In the computer transfer, I somehow lost the finished outside photos of this blanket, so you get the cruddy “I just finished sewing this so I’m going to take photos of it on the carpet in the sewing room” photos.

See, still sewing. Just too busy to talk much about it. This is the quilt I’m working on for my daughter and uses some raw edge applique. While I have talked about how I don’t like Pellon’s Wonder Under in the past, I took the time this project (solely because I bought the wrong stuff) to figure out how to work with it. And you know what? I don’t hate it this time. So, progress,right?

You may or may not know that I have a daughter with cerebral palsy, but I ALSO have a daughter that has/had Sensory Processing Disorder. This shows itself in such a variety of symptoms that varies vastly from child to child. My daughter is a craves sensory input, rather than avoiding it. And one thing that she craved was being tightly swaddled and caressing touches. From about 1.5 to 3 years old, she used a weighted blanket at nap time and at night and it truly helped her calm her world enough to sleep. These days at 5, she is the soundest sleeper ever known to mankind without any assistance, but it really helped her when she was younger.

Recently, I’ve started sewing weighted blankets for friends and people that I’ve met online. I can only hope that these blankets help other families find some moments of rest and sleep and sensory relief.